Dos Hermanos
by Ultrawoman
Summary: It wasn't a lie. When he told Miranda he hadn't been home in more than ten years, Martin Riggs told the absolute truth. Of course the words were well chosen. She took it to mean he hadn't seen his family in all that time, but that wasn't exactly true.


**A/N: This is the first thing I've written pertaining to Lethal Weapon but somehow I feel as if it won't be the last. I've seen 13 of the 18 episodes so far (I'm watching at UK television pace) but I'm assured by those who have seen the full Season 1 that I haven't gone against canon in in the concept of this fic, so that's cool ;)**

 _ **Disclaimer: All recognisable characters from Lethal Weapon and Leverage belong to Shane Black, Fox, John Rogers, Dean Devlin, Chris Downey, TNT, and other folks who aren't me.**_

Dos Hermanos

It wasn't a lie. When he told Miranda he hadn't been home in more than ten years, Martin Riggs told the absolute truth. Of course the words were well chosen. She took it to mean he hadn't seen his family in all that time, but that wasn't exactly true.

Getting out of the military, he sure hadn't figured on becoming a cop, and it was the last person he ever expected that led him down that path.

Thinking back on it now, bottle in hand, Riggs smiled sadly. Everybody had sympathy for him, for his situation. Losing his wife, his unborn child, it tore him up into so many pieces, he hadn't a clue how to put them back together, and often wondered if it was even worth trying. They didn't know why she was his world, how much he lost before his beloved wife ever came onto the picture.

Bad enough to watch his fellow soldiers fall row on row. They were brothers in arms, bonded by experience and pain, but it mattered to folks like them. That didn't mean blood family meant nothing, that a brother by birth could be easily tossed aside. Jonah made it hard enough to love him these days, but Martin had trouble stopping, even now.

Christmas always reminded him more. Though this year Miranda clouded his thoughts more than ever, there were other memories. The good, the bad, and the ugly were ganging up on him tonight, and every pull on the whiskey bottle made it worse rather than better. Recalling the last time he saw his brother made the booze taste more bitter than it ever had before.

"Hey, little brother. Long time, no see."

Jonah talked like he was making a fine and happy entrance into Martin's apartment, instead of falling over the threshold, covered in blood. The way he staggered proved at least some of the red stuff was his own, and yet there was something in Riggs that told him it wasn't all.

"Geez, Jonah. What the hell, man?"

The guy actually laughed even as he collapsed to the floor, bleeding out on the carpet. It took an hour for Martin to get him cleaned up and some semblance of comfortable. They hadn't seen each other in a good long while, and there were a bunch of reasons why. Though identical twins were supposed to be like two parts of the same whole, the Riggs boys had always been different. Sure, they looked the same for the most part, albeit Jonah had grown his hair out and Martin hadn't shaved much since he came back from his last tour, but that was where the similarities ended. They hadn't even shared a last name in quite a while, from what Martin heard, and he was about to hear a whole lot more than he wanted to.

"Thanks," said Jonah, looking down at the gauze and bandages binding his wounds. "I usually take care of this stuff myself, but, well, things got a little messier than planned."

"How'd you know I was here?"

"I know people." Jonah smirked in a way that his brother didn't much care for, mostly because he knew just exactly what kind of people were being referred to. "You think I wouldn't keep tabs on my little brother when I heard he got done fighting for his country?"

"Two minutes," Martin snapped. "There are two minutes between us, so you can stop with the 'little brother' crap already," he warned him.

"You did always hate that," Jonah recalled, smirk turning into a smile that faded too quickly. "Nice to know some things never change."

Riggs would like to believe a lot more hadn't changed, but that would make him a fool. As much as he loved his brother and always would, the man sat on his couch right now wasn't the Jonah he knew and grew up with. He had been replaced, stolen away and exchanged for another, a cold-blooded killer that went by the name of Quinn. Worst of it was, it'd been Martin himself who gave him that name, however unintentionally.

"We expectin' company?" he asked his brother then. "Whoever or whatever did this to you-"

"He's long gone," Jonah interrupted, meeting Martin's eyes. "Trust me."

That he could do. If he said the bad guy was gone, then he meant it, and gone didn't mean run off into the night either. Martin surpressed a shudder, got up from the couch and walked away. He returned in a minute from the kitchen area with two mismatched shot glasses and a half-bottle of whiskey. Pouring two healthy measures, he shoved one into his brother's hand.

"Thanks," Jonah muttered, downing the shot a second behind Martin drinking his own. "So, how've you been?"

"Seriously?" Martin asked, slamming his glass back onto the table. "Years gone by, you showin' up bleedin' all over my place, and the best you've got is 'how've you been?'. I thought you were dead, Jonah!" he yelled at him then.

"And for a while I thought you were too!" his brother countered, almost as loudly, except breathing deep enough to make so much noise would only make his broken ribs hurt more. "An associate of mine, he got intel from Iraq, heard the worst had happened to your team."

"Yeah, well. I guess I got lucky. At least what I do... What I did, it was for the good of others."

"You think what I do isn't? Things are different now, Martin. I'm no saint, I'm not going to pretend I am, but... Well, I met some people. They're not exactly law-abiding citizens but they're doing good. I work with them sometimes, more often than I work the other side of the line these days," he admitted, reaching for the abandoned bottle and refilling his glass. "For all the good it does me," he muttered.

Martin stared at him a long while. He didn't really understand what his brother was telling him. People working around the law but doing good, it made them sound like Robin Hood or something. As far as he knew, there really weren't people like that in the world, and if there were, Quinn wasn't likely to be one of them, even if Jonah had the potential once. Still, he'd like to believe it. It helped to try.

They didn't talk much more than night, and when Martin woke up in the morning, Jonah was long gone. From that day to this, he hadn't seen his brother again, but he looked into the situation Jonah had talked about. There were some people, called themselves Leverage International, and they were helping folks, any way they could. People that the law couldn't or wouldn't assist. The name Quinn was associated with some of their cases, and that was some comfort to Riggs. Maybe his brother was coming back to the right side. Maybe he wasn't all bad. Still, Martin wasn't willing to drift across the line the way Jonah had. In fact, when he got the chance to be a cop, he leapt at it, perhaps just to redress the balance, to even out the damage Quinn had done in the past. After all, they were twin brothers, two halves of the same whole...

"Wherever you are, Jonah," he said, bottle raised into the middle-distance, "be safe, brother," he told him across the ether of time and space, before he let the blackness take him for tonight.

In his dreams, for once he was not visited by Miranda. Instead he would see a childhood spent inseparable from his twin. The two of them climbing trees, fishing in the creek, running barefoot through the dirt without a care. The neighbour's dog barked angrily from behind the locked gate, pulling tight on his chain. Martin liked to goad the beast but Jonah would keep his distance when the mean old thing snapped and growled like a wild animal.

"You ain't gotta be afraid of old Quinn," Martin told his brother. "He ain't dangerous for as long as he's tied up like that."

"What happens if he gets free?" his brother asked, a shake in his voice that gave away the fear he was trying his best not to show.

Martin had no answer, not back then and not in the dream. When he woke up to his adult body and the well-worn ceiling of his beaten up trailer, he knew the answer well enough, but he wasn't sure he liked it any.

"Some things do change," he said to himself, running a hand over his face.

Then he reached for the bottle and poured another drink.

The End


End file.
